


The Last Fare of the Day

by Muccamukk



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Chance Meetings, Christmas Eve, Light Angst, M/M, Post-War, San Francisco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28343223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: It was late; Joe was tired, and it turned out that dealing with ghosts of the war hadn't gotten any easier in the last five years.
Relationships: Joseph Liebgott/David Kenyon Webster
Comments: 20
Kudos: 56
Collections: fandomtrees





	The Last Fare of the Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Impala_Chick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impala_Chick/gifts).



It was cold, rainy and Joe was working, which made it a pretty typical Christmas Eve. Most of the Jewish guys at the cab company worked that night: there were plenty of fares, and usually you hit at least a couple of guys living high on all that peace and good will towards men bullshit and tipped accordingly.

Joe's shift ended at zero one hundred, and he had just enough time for one more fare, so he did a slow crawl in front of the bars like he always did, peering through his rain slicked windshield for any sign of someone flagging him down.

He almost missed him. Not that the fellow was a small man, but he was wearing a dark jacket, a darker hat, and was raising his hand diffidently, like a student who wasn't sure he had the right answer. Joe pulled in anyway. If he wasn't a fare, Joe could give him the what for about wasting his time, and send him on his way. But the fellow pulled the back door open and slid in, bringing about five gallons of rain in with him.

"Guess you guys don't go in for white Christmases, huh, Lieb," David Webster said.

"Son of a bitch!" Joe replied. It wasn't like Joe would forget that voice in a million years, but just to be sure, he took a flashlight out of the glove compartment and shone it right in Webster's face.

Webster tried to get his hand up to keep the light from blinding him, but Joe moved it adeptly and continued to study him. It was David Webster all right, five years older but still the same blue-eyed schmuck he remembered trekking around half of Europe beside. It'd been raining most of the time then, too.

"Fuck!" Joe said, and lowered the flashlight. "What the fuck you doing in my cab, Webster?"

"Looking for a ride?" Webster asked, but he didn't sound any more convinced than Joe was.

Joe scoffed. "Of all the cabs in all the cities in the world, you just happened to flag down mine, is that it?"

He still had Web in the edge of the light, even if he wasn't blinding him anymore, and thus got to watch his face shift through a series of expressions as he stuttered, delayed, and then finally admitted. "So maybe I called your company and asked where you were working."

"Fuck, Webster. You say I owe you money or something?" If Ethel at dispatch had sold Joe out to a creditor, they were going to be having words later.

"I said you were an army buddy," Web told him. Nothing in the last five years had changed the way his eyes got wide and he took on this wounded look like his damn dog had just died at the slightest thing. How the man had survived four years in the army, Joe had no idea. He hadn't known then, either.

"'Buddy,'" he said, shaking his head. "I guess you could call it that."

"What else would you call it?" Webster asked. He seemed genuinely curious, perfectly willing to have this conversation while Joe was idling in a pick up zone, blowing a bunch of gas.

Joe shook his head again—he seemed to do that a lot around Webster—turned around, and put the car into gear. "So, Web, where to?"

He heard Webster slump into the backseat. "My hotel's fine," he said and rattled off the name of a decidedly below mid-range joint that Joe wouldn't have thought he'd touch with a barge pole.

Joe clicked the meter on and pulled into the dregs of holiday traffic, grinning to himself. That was a good twenty-minute fare, and would take him neatly to the end of his shift, not direly far from his apartment. Perfect.

"So," Joe said, once he had them on the way. He drove one handed and lit a smoke with the other. "What brings you out to the West Coast for the holidays?"

"Why do you care?" Webster asked, apparently still stinging from the buddies comment.

"Who says I care?" Joe asked. "We got a bit of a drive, and if you wanna sit back there and sulk, I can turn on the radio, but I don't think either of us is gonna like what's on." Though now that he thought of it, maybe Webster was the type that listened to endless Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra crooning Tin Pan Alley carols this time of the year. That'd probably just about suit him.

"No, I guess, I wouldn't," Web muttered, and Joe frowned. That wasn't how it was supposed to go. Webster was supposed to shoot back with his own smart remark, or what an egghead like him thought was smart, and they'd go a few rounds before settling into some kind of resentful companionship. Well, usually they just ended up finding a quiet corner and fucking, but then there'd be restful companionship after that, or at least a nap. Joe had thought that Web really was going sulk out the rest of the drive, but then he said, "Couldn't stand spending another goddamn Christmas back East."

Joe hadn't even liked taking passes out East, but he suspected Webster's reasoning was different than his. Joe hadn't liked the people there as a general body, and Web sounded like he had someone specific in mind. "You think this is far enough away? Or do you want to catch a boat for Hawaii?"

Webster actually thought about it. He wiped at the window with the sleeve of his jacket, smearing condensation with rain, and not making anything a damn bit clearer. "Honestly? Hawaii sounds pretty good right now. You ever been, Joe?"

When Webster had used to ask him things like that a decade before, Joe'd thought it was his way of rubbing his family's money in his face, but eventually he'd worked out that Webster genuinely had no clue that normal people usually hadn't been outside their own state before the war came, let alone on vacations to tropical islands. "I look like a fucking Marine?"

"Not with that haircut," Webster replied, and Joe smiled. That sounded better. "Anyway. I'm thinking of moving out here, got some interviews with the local papers next week, thought I'd come out early and look around."

"Jeez, you gotta spend four years at Harvard just to rake muck now?" Joe asked, trying to cover his shock. This was worse than Webster turning up in his cab. Joe could just about handle that, so long as he knew that Web would be tucked back in New York, or wherever it was that he was supposed to be, a week later. Having him lurking around Joe's city, ready to pop up at any moment was more than Joe's nerves might be able to handle.

"Something like that," Web said easily, as if he knew he had the upper hand finally. Smug son of a bitch.

"Well don't take anything at the Bulletin. I know that used to be a good paper, but it's a goddamn rag now," Joe said, trying to get back on top of the conversation. They hit a busy intersection though, and he had to keep more than half an eye on the road. You'd think people in northern California would know how to drive in the damn rain, but that never seemed to be the case.

"Any other tips?" Webster asked, sounding amused.

Joe could think of a few, more than a few, really, a whole battalion's worth of information about his hometown, and how not to get killed in it, but he just said, "Tips is extra."

Webster breathed out a laugh. "Of course they are," then fell quiet. It wasn't a sulky quiet, or even an anxious quiet, just... not wanting to say anything. Joe found it unsettling.

They were getting close to the hotel, and Joe didn't want the conversation to end on that note. Hell, he wasn't sure he wanted it to end at all. He didn't know why Web was in his damn cab in the first place. Joe thought about slowing, or taking the scenic route, but bulking out the fare wasn't his style, and Webster'd already had more than enough time to tell him what the fuck he thought he was doing. Joe wasn't going to fish for it.

When they were about two blocks back, Webster piped up again. Actually, he leaned forward and asked real low and serious, "Say, Liebgott, are you working tomorrow?"

"It's Christmas; what the fuck do you think I'm doing?"

Web was so close that the breath of his laugh tickled Joe's hair. "Can you pick me up at the start of your shift?"

It wasn't like people didn't reserve cabs ever, but the way Web asked, how near he was, the hesitation in the question, it sounded a lot less like a business deal, and a lot more like something else. "What the fuck for?"

"I'll hire the car for the afternoon," Web said seriously, "with extra for advice, and you can show me this city of yours. The one you wouldn't stop talking about over there. I want to see it."

"Son of a bitch," Joe muttered, but lower this time. Technically, it was a business proposition, and one Joe shouldn't turn down. Rides on Christmas day itself weren't as reliable, and having his car secured for a whole afternoon was money he shouldn't pass up. But showing a buddy around his home town—especially if that buddy was someone on whose dick he'd sometimes used to fell—on Christmas day no less, sounded an awful lot like a damn date. "Why me?"

Joe pulled up to the hotel as he asked, and left the meter running, but Webster still took his time to think about that one. "I guess I've missed you, Joe," he said, "and you never answered my letters."

"Fuck." Joe clicked off the meter. It was a nice little sum, and he expected that Webster would tip, but suddenly he thought that any money he got off him would taste of ashes. "I never read those letters," he said. He didn't want to explain why. It was too much on any day, let alone this one. It was late; Joe was tired, and it turned out that dealing with ghosts of the war hadn't gotten any easier in the last five years.

Webster slumped into the back seat again. He rummaged through his wallet for the fare, and held it out. Joe reached back and took the bills, started rummaging for change, but Web told him to keep it.

"See you around, Lieb," he said as he got out of the car. Rain and wind blasted in the open door. Joe thought of him spending the night in this shithole hotel, trying to dry his coat on the radiator. Maybe he'd burn the fucking place down, couldn't do anything but improve it. Then he'd spend tomorrow doing what? Wandering around the city like a lost lamb, probably, just waiting to be fleeced.

"Hey, Web," Joe called after him. "My shift starts at eleven hundred. Be out here waiting, or get left behind."

Joe couldn't see anything through the dark and rain, but he could still imagine Web's smile. The guy always looked like you'd given him a million bucks every time you weren't a total asshole to him.

"I'll be here," he said, and slammed the door just a little too hard.

"You better be," Joe yelled, even though he knew there was no way Webster could hear him. He sat behind the wheel for a moment, wondering what the hell had just happened, then pulled away for home. There'd be plenty of time to figure that out in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos totally make my day, and I very much appreciate comments of every length, percentage of emoji, and level of coherency.


End file.
